IDW Star Trek Ongoing...

Zahra from the second Operation: Annihilate issue looks like a clear mistake (in the first panel with her) - the artist seems to have forgotten that they were supposed to be drawing Zahra and used Rand instead. A few panels later, there is a picture of Zahra from behind and she clearly has dark hair and a darker skin tone.

You have a physicist at the helm, a navigator as chief engineer, and a computer scientist as first officer, but you draw the line at a security guard doing admin?

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I'm just saying that it would be nice to see a yeoman portrayed as what a yeoman actually is, rather than making it a meaningless title for a character who's doing something entirely different.

Besides, none of your examples is equivalent to this. Sulu changed jobs from physicist to helmsman. Chekov changed jobs from navigator to engineer. And Spock is consistently addressed as both first officer and science officer. If you're not going to portray a character as an administrative aide at all, if you're just going to present her as another security guard, then just bloomin' call her a security guard, not a yeoman.

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Then perhaps we're talking at cross purposes. I was suggesting that the yeoman be a security-trained crewman who changed jobs to be a yeoman.

The wider point I was trying to make was that astronomy to engineering (or security in the prime universe) is actually a bigger leap in terms of training because they are quite different disciplines. Being a yeoman would require a more limited skill set than being a starship engineer, and learning about administration on a starship is something that would be part of basic training. We also know that even in TOS, all the crew were trained astronauts, often featured performing tasks in multiple disciplines.

So, the yeomen would have to be trained in something else as well as admin - it makes sense to pick something that can contribute to the story in simple ways. Pick communications or helm and they are almost never going to contribute to the story e.g. Rand and Uhura's brief stints at helm and navigation in TOS. Pick engineering and it's likely they can contribute more often in a meaningful way. Pick security and they can contribute whenever they're joined to a landing party.

I do agree that I want the yeoman to be seen doing the job they're supposed to be doing but I would not want that to be all they did any more than I want Uhura just to answer the phone or Sulu just to fly the ship. I would like Rand to be developed into a modernised version of the character she was intended to be but that will only happen gradually if they feature her doing her job regularly.

As far as ethnicity goes, I'm not a fan of a stark one in, one out approach, where you replace one similar character for another (like Babylon 5 did from pilot to season one) but I am also not in favour of replacing characters of ethnic minorities with Caucasian characters unless the reverse is also happening elsewhere to keep the overall 'cast' balanced.

I don't want to interrupt the nonstop "Zahra" thread, but I wanted to say that I thought #31 was a step up from the last 2-parter. OK, so "I, Enterprise" doesn't have anything much like a plot yet, but the "origin of 0317" (that was his name, right? I could go check, but I'm too lazy...) was involving. I give it as thumb up.

I think 2-parter origin stories work well because they have a focus. The previous story would have been fine if it had been followed up by an actual 3 or 4 part story. It will be interesting to see where they go with 0718 longer term. I hope it heralds the introduction of a few more alien crewmen over time as well.

I'm curious, if he's unique as the comic says, why is he named Science Officer 0718? When I saw the name in the movie credits (so much for GATT2000) I must admit it made me think AU Starfleet is operating some kind of Universal Soldier program.

Why have the comics suddenly jumped ahead by a year, to 2261, when we only got two story lines in 2260 (After Darkness and the Gorn colony story)... The Khitomer Conflict starts at Stardate 2261.147 (If the 147 represents days into the year from Jan 1, that would be around May 27 ... The Gorn colony mission of the previous issue was on Stardate 2260.115 (Which would be April 25, 2260, since there are 31 days in January, 28 in Feb, 31 in March, then add 25 days to make the 115) - why did the story jump ahead almost a year? Was there a reason that anyone can see, plot-wise?

^^That logic might hold in the previous Treks where the stardates generally are random numbers (despite the 24th century's attempt to try to add consistency to them). But since the stardates in the Abramsverse are basically just the Earth calendar year, it does make that sort of thing stick out a bit more.

^^That logic might hold in the previous Treks where the stardates generally are random numbers (despite the 24th century's attempt to try to add consistency to them). But since the stardates in the Abramsverse are basically just the Earth calendar year, it does make that sort of thing stick out a bit more.

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Which is an odd decision in itself. You can just visualise some money man in a office: "What's the crazy numbers? Change 'em so everybody can understand." It does seem like a shame when some of the innovation of the sixties show gets stomped on by modern ignorance.

Although it would not be hard to have a Trek calendar in the cloud upon which the writers could add each mission on a date, I think we'd probably realise that the realistically most of the time the ship would just be travelling in between star systems.

Although it would not be hard to have a Trek calendar in the cloud upon which the writers could add each mission on a date, I think we'd probably realise that the realistically most of the time the ship would just be travelling in between star systems.

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At least the 24th century stardates can be determined easily with the Stardate Calculator. The 23rd century ones, however, most likely don't make any sense whatsoever.

At least the 24th century stardates can be determined easily with the Stardate Calculate.

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Except that what date information we can extract from actual onscreen evidence doesn't actually correspond to what that calculator's stardates suggest -- for instance, the stardate of the First Contact Day celebration according to VGR. No matter how much we try to pretend there's a consistent pattern to any given stardate system, there really isn't. Even the new movie stardates don't quite add up -- it's generally accepted that Kirk was born on March 22 (same as Shatner), and was maybe born just a week or two early in the Abramsverse (since he was born on the ship instead of on Earth), but the cited stardate was 2233.04, which by the alleged Abramsverse scheme would be January 4, 2233.